You search, you’ll find. We are on vacation to visit my aunt on Rhodes, Greece and couldn’t help think about how to get on bikes (despite having two off-weeks). Turns out that Rhodes has a velodrome which was built in 1930. Our aunt stopped by the velodrome, found out that a team regularly trains on Tuesdays, and Max and I decided to swing by and say hi.
The velodrome looks amazing and is something we never guessed could be found on Rhodes! You could tell that the velodrome was built a long time ago but everything was in great shape. There was also a lot of seating for spectators.
We ran into a club called Diagoras Cycling (in Greek letters ΔΙΑΓΟΡΑΣ Cycling) which is on Facebook and Instagram. Their coach, Valentinos, and all the riders were super nice and allowed us to ride on their bikes when they were in between efforts. One of the team members is the current Greek U15 road race champion — she was super strong. They told us that Rhodes has a very big cycling culture with five junior teams but that the Diagoras team is the best one of course! We also kept seeing several junior cyclists when we were driving around the the island.
We had a fantastic time and Coach Valentinos invited us to come back the following week to join them for a full training session. Coach Valentinos also called a local bike shop to see whether they could rent us track bikes. We went there right away and met a person named David. Crazy thing is that David manufactures track and road bikes which are called FIDUSA and they looked super cool.
When we came back for the training session the following week, Coach Valentinos gave each of us a club T-Shirt and Max and I put it on right away. You can see us wearing it in the first picture above. During the training, we had a warm-up with a build-up in speed, two 50 meter efforts, two 100 meter efforts, two 200 meter efforts, two 400 meter efforts, and finally a cool-down. The below video shows me and two Diagoras cyclists starting one of the sprints. So much fun and it felt a bit like being at our Kissena home track but things were still very different.
Max was sitting out this training session because he is taking his two off-weeks very seriously. But after the training ended he still rode a few laps on the bike I rented after the training ended.
Can’t wait to be back on Rhodes for more cycling events. Did some research and found that they have many cycling events in the spring, the UCI Gran Fondo Rhodes Tour, Gran Prix of Rhodes, International tour of Rhodes, etc. With a little luck one of those perhaps fits with our school spring break.
This vacation has taught us one BIG lesson. Never ever, and I mean ever, leave for vacation without a helmet, cycling shoes, pedals, bike computer, and our Star Track kit.
